This Year’s Key Trends in AI-driven UX Design

“AI is the new UI.” AI is changing the way consumers and brands think about user experiences. AI challenges conventional interactions, adds new channels such as voice, and personalizes user interfaces to be targeted at an individual’s preferences.

There is no way around it. Artificial intelligence is here, and it is the future of UX design. In 2018, we have seen AI offer brands and their customers more innovative insights, more intimate engagement, more specific contexts, faster processing, and more intuitive interfaces. So, before ushering in a new year of AI innovation and disruption, let’s take a look back at 4 of the biggest AI-driven UX trends of 2018.

AI has transformed the way brands use voice and language processing

Good UX eliminates friction from your brand’s touchpoints and engages with your customers on their terms. And there has been no bigger development in creating engaging, frictionless UX this year than the continued insurgence of voice technology. More than half of US teens and 41% of US adults used voice search every day in 2018. In addition, by 2020, 50% of all searches will be voice searches. And it’s not surprising. Voice keeps users engaged and fuels intensely personal connections with brands. With recent developments in natural language processing and machine learning, the technology will only grow in scope, nuance, and omnipresence in the coming years. There is no fighting it: voice represents the next big frontier in UX. For businesses and brands to stay relevant moving forward, it will be vital for them to make it a top priority.

AI has created vision-driven UX

It is not only self-driving cars. AI innovations have led to breakthrough after breakthrough in the field of vision-driven UX in 2018. The biggest advance, no question, is visual search.

Visual search uses pattern matching algorithms to recommend exact matches or similar items in a database. These recommendations, based on a visual input, reduce friction, encourage engagement, and appeal to modern consumers who crave visual stimuli. Thanks to advances in automation and data collection, computer vision technologies have exploded in the last year. Every day, 45 million visual searches are performed on Amazon. Pinterest receives over 300 million visual searches per month. Smaller companies are catching on too. And the impact of visual search on e-commerce, what consumers expect from e-commerce, and how brands can recommend products will only grow and expand as the matches become better. Companies who do not embrace embrace visual recognition will fall by the wayside.

AI has shown that personalization is (still) king

This year more than ever, consumers expect intensely personalized engagement at every level of their brand experiences. By employing AI that constantly studies and adjusts to consumer behavior, brands have been able to create interfaces and experiences that engage with users on the most intimate, granular levels we have ever seen. From product recommendations to news feeds to daily playlists to dynamic interfaces, AI-driven technologies are creating personalized, next-generation, living, breathing experiences across the entire consumer journey. Whether it is the initial contact, a lead conversion or maintaining a brand loyalist, AI creates specific experiences and conversations with each of these individuals at each point of their journey. Successful interactions between the consumer and interface were not hollow, one-sided exchanges in 2018, they were holistic, symbiotic experiences.

AI continues to push Agile Design and Design Thinking

In order to get the best results, you need to use the best process. There is no question that the most successful businesses and brands in 2018 followed the tenets of Agile Design and Design Thinking across their UX development, marketing, and sales channels.

Both Agile and Design Thinking harness the principles of design and product development to create human-centered engagement solutions. They place the vast potential of human creativity inside a highly functional, structured methodology, enabling businesses to scale their functions and prioritize the human-centered experiences that can be delivered by a highly disruptive technology. It is about making decisions and creating interfaces based on a data-rich understanding of your customer’s experiences, motivations, and needs. Effective UX meets your customers on their terms, and it has been shown again and again in 2018 that successful companies use empathetic, human-centered design processes to get them there.

All in all

2018 has brought another boom in AI-driven solutions. By taking simple steps toward integrating those solutions with UX design and marketing strategies, brands have gained access to infinitely more optimized and personalized end-user experiences.

If you’d like a free consultation on how to incorporate AI into your next UX project, get in touch today!